“Badfish” by Sublime

"Badfish" had been floating around Sublime's world for years before it landed on 40 oz. to Freedom, the Long Beach band's 1992 debut. Bradley Nowell wrote it and first recorded it in 1989, with a nod to the Ziggens' "All the Fun That We Missed" and his deep love of reggae, and it turned up on the 1991 demo tape Jah Won't Pay the Bills before Michael "Miguel" Happoldt recorded, produced and mixed the album take.

It's a lazy, sun-baked ska sway, Nowell on guitars and vocals, Eric Wilson on bass and organ, Bud Gaugh on drums, with hometown working-class grit in the words. Under the easy groove, though, it's about Nowell trying to resist heroin, and in hindsight it reads like a warning. MTV and radio wouldn't touch it until after his overdose in 1996; since then it has become one of the band's best-loved songs, even among Sublime's critics.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.